Love’s Journey Home (41 page)

“I know.” Isaac picked at the folded napkin on the table. He began to refold it. “Do
you think you will remarry?”

The air whooshed from Gabriel’s lungs. The question he’d been asking himself for years
now. More and more lately. The image of Helen Crouch smacking the volleyball over
the net, her dimples deep around a wide smile, filled his vision. He batted it away.
He cleared his throat and drank from a glass of sweet tea, set it down, and then coughed.

“Daed, it’s not a commitment. I mean, do you think about it at all?”

“Why do you ask? Did someone say something? I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yet? Then there’s someone.”

He hadn’t meant to say that or imply that. He had no idea if there were someone. If
that someone was even the right someone. Plump. Awkward. A mother hen. So different
from Laura. Wasn’t that the point? There would never be another Laura. But there was
hope of something more, something different. Someone different. “Why do you want to
know? It’s a private matter.”

“I don’t want to know about your business.” Isaac squirmed in his chair like a little
boy being asked to recite his times tables in front of the whole class. “I’m asking
because I’m trying to figure out something.”

“What is that something?”

“What do you think it would be like to be married to someone who has been married
before?”

Gabriel had given this topic a great deal of thought. He and Laura had been so young.
They’d never shared their thoughts and dreams with anyone other than each other. From
the early grades of school they’d been drawn together. First, as teammates who scrapped
and pushed each other on the walk home, later on buggy rides after singings, and during
visits late at night to her home, long after her parents had gone to bed. Those nights
on the front porch, seated side by side in the rocking chairs, had been filled with
conversations about the lives they would build together, the children they would have,
the memories they would share. Surely a woman like Helen had done the same with her
husband. They had had four children together, shared a home, made a life. How did
two people who had lost something they thought would last a lifetime make new memories,
a new life, together?

“Daed?”

Gabriel started, realizing Isaac was still waiting for a response. “I think it would
take time.”

“Time?”

“Time to get used to each other. To figure out how it will be. Because it would be
different. For the person who’s been married before.”

“How?”

Gabriel groped for the words. “Your mudder had known me since the schoolhouse, before
even. She knew what I liked for breakfast. She knew how I liked my pants to fit a
little loose and the way I liked time at night to myself to think. She knew all about
me. I knew all about her. What flowers she wanted to plant in the garden. How she
didn’t like beets. The way she liked the sheets tucked in. Her favorite blackberry
jam. Her favorite kind of cookies—oatmeal-walnut-raisin. The way she cut the sandwiches
corner to corner instead of across.”

He stopped. Heat burned his face.

“I know.” Isaac’s voice softened. “She knew everything about you.”

“Everything. Just as I knew everything about her.”

“But you think it can happen more than once?”

“Jah.”

“I don’t see how I can take the place of another man when a woman has loved only him.”

That was it. The crux of Isaac’s worry. He feared he would be found lacking.

“You won’t take his place.” Gabriel picked his words with care, realizing as he said
them that he meant them as much for himself as Isaac. “That can’t be done. No one
can take the place of your mudder. But I reckon there might be room in a man’s heart
for more than one such love in a lifetime. Look at Thomas.”

“Jah, look at Thomas.” Isaac nodded, his face hopeful. “He seems mighty happy.”

“He is happy.”

They were both silent then. Gabriel contemplated how these things happened. He and
his son were at similar crossroads, despite the years of difference in their ages.
Isaac had set his sights on a widow with a child. A widower himself, with eight children,
Gabriel suspected his row was a much harder one to hoe. Eight children plus four.
Helen’s Edmond, so willful and rebellious. Gabriel’s Abigail, seeking to fill a void
in her heart left by a mother gone too soon. How could these people live together
in the same house as a family?

Hold your horses. Don’t get ahead of yourself
. He’d been nothing but harsh when it came to Helen. Why would she give him the time
of day? Yet her expression when she’d given him the lemonade at Thomas’s house had
said she would. He was no expert at these things, but she seemed willing that day
when they played volleyball. Then he’d gone and spoiled it by overreacting about Edmond
and Abigail.

“You don’t have any more idea than I do about all this woman stuff, do you?” Isaac
cocked his head and smiled for the first time. “But you’re thinking about taking a
gander at it, aren’t you?”

“Never you mind.” Gabriel stood. “I’m getting some more tea. You’d think those girls
would have supper on the table by now.”

“You’d think. It seems ham and beans take a long time to prepare.”

“Or Abigail was daydreaming and got a late start on it.”

“Most likely.”

Gabriel paused in the doorway. He studied his son’s bent head. He looked so much like
Gabriel, but he had his mother’s heart. “Tread softly.”

“What?” Isaac looked up from the newspaper he didn’t seem to be reading, but rather
folding and refolding. “What do you mean?”

“A woman’s heart is a strange thing.” Gabriel looked at the empty glass in his hand,
wishing it were full. His throat still felt dry. “I surely can’t figure it out.”

Isaac shrugged and smiled again. “You will. We both will.”

The optimism of youth.

G
abriel tugged on the reins and brought the buggy to a halt several yards from the
front door of the school. It might be the first day of the new school year, but the
sun beating down on him and Seth announced that the brutally hot Kansas summer refused
to make an exit. Murky clouds hung low in the sky. The humidity weighted down his
damp shirt, making it cling to his back and shoulders. And this at seven o’clock in
the morning. What would midafternoon be like? He longed for a breath of cool air.
He longed to throw himself in the creek, clothes and all. Even the movement of the
buggy brought no relief in a soggy, hot rush of air that didn’t serve to dry the sweat
on his face.

Seth had insisted the ride wasn’t necessary, but Gabriel had no intention of ending
the time-honored Gless family tradition of taking the children to school on the first
day. In Dahlburg they’d lived close enough to the school that Laura and the children
could walk the short path to the one-room building. They’d done so each year. Now
only Seth attended and he only had Gabriel to accompany him. The little girls would
go eventually, but there was no hurry, given the little they could be expected to
learn of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Gabriel didn’t want them to be a distraction
that kept the teacher from applying herself to the other students’ learning. She would
have to have an assistant to work with his girls. Time enough for that when they turned
five or six.

Seth made no move to hop from the buggy.

“What’s the matter, son?” Gabriel studied his youngest son’s somber face. “Got the
first-day-of-school jitters?”

“Nee.” Seth’s expression belied his answer. Balancing his lunchbox in one hand, he
climbed down from the buggy with the movements of an old person. “I’m sorry summer’s
over.”

“Fewer chores,” Gabriel offered. “Less time keeping an eye on your little sisters.”

“I don’t mind the chores or the girls.” Seth sniffed and blew out a sigh. He sounded
much older than his eight years. “I like fishing when I get done with the chores.
And swimming in the creek. And playing baseball.”

“And you aren’t looking forward to being the new scholar, I reckon.”

Seth shrugged, but the misery in his eyes told the real story.

Gabriel hopped down. No reason he couldn’t provide a little backup for his youngest
son. Being the new boy at school wasn’t much fun, as he recalled. But the Plain children
would make him feel welcome. That was what they were expected to do.

“Look, they’ve got a game of volleyball going.” He put a hand on Seth’s skinny shoulder.
“Look, there’s Eli and Rebecca. And Lillie and Mary. You know a bunch of these kinner.
And you like volleyball.”

“I like baseball better.” Still, Seth’s face brightened. “I don’t like math. Or spelling.
Or English.”

“Learn to like them.”

“Hey, Seth!” Ginny Crouch skipped toward them, her smile stretching across her chubby
cheeks. She had Helen’s dimples. Gabriel shut the door on that unwanted thought. “Wanna
play? School doesn’t start for a few minutes.”